


The Red Lady

by NeverwinterThistle



Category: Dishonored (Video Games), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bloodplay, Crossover, F/F, Fingerfucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-01-05 16:25:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18369719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverwinterThistle/pseuds/NeverwinterThistle
Summary: Melanie is shot by a ghost in the Flooded District. It's only the start of her problems.





	The Red Lady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacehopper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehopper/gifts).



[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/157255657@N03/33671487698/in/dateposted/)

_It’s a start_ , Melanie thinks as the floodwaters lap against her shins. Her hands shake almost too badly to steady her silvergraph machine. She didn’t bring a stand for it. That was a mistake. Or maybe not; it’ll be easier to run away without one. _It’s a good start. I can work with this._

It’s taken weeks to get to where she is; soaked and stinking of rot and riverweed, shivering in a tumbledown brick building. There are shadows on the wall where paintings hung before they were rescued or 'rehomed'. Water-stained wood floorboards, torn and tatty curtains. Must have been nice, once. Home to a banker, a moneylender, an insurer. Not quite posh enough for the Estate District - but given than she and Georgie together still can’t afford to move more than a street out from the docks, Melanie supposes she can hardly judge. She does anyway. The curtains are awful. She’d do better.

And will, if the silvergraph plate in her bag turns out as it should.

There are so many haunted places in the Isles; Melanie’s read the reports, pored over sketches and data from abandoned Karnaca mine shafts and lonely Caulkenny shipwrecks. She knows all the local haunts (though they’re not as literal as she would like, and none have produced usable results without a little…coaxing). She’s spent the night in the abandoned West wing of the Academy of Natural Philosophy. She has wandered her fair share of sewers, and fled more river krust than she likes, which is to say any at all. She’s taken silvergraphs of sad Distillery District weepers and doctored them with ink or bleach, publishing the results as ‘ghostly encounters’. It’s not unethical if everyone does it.

But the woman in the red coat is different.  Not a weeper or a shadow on a wall. Not an urban legend and a friend in costume, or an overactive imagination and the technology to bring it to life. She’s real. And Melanie has taken her silvergraph twice now.

Leaning back against the moss-stained brick, she breathes deeply, and doesn’t close her eyes.

It was risky, getting this second image. The first was pure chance; a random encounter after days of patient surveillance, and a ghost woman as startled as Melanie herself. The former vanished into thin air, the latter running for her life, but not before snapping the shutter. An accident. The _Ghost Hunt_ readers want more than an accident.  

The second image will be a close-up, if it develops as Melanie hopes. Taken from a rooftop, staring down into an ostensibly abandoned building where movement caught her eye, a red coat flapping around its owner’s thighs. A carefully thrown pebble, and the snap of a shutter as the ghost turned to look.

She was seen, though. Melanie leans hard on the wall, willing her hands to stop their shaking. This time, she was definitely noticed. And she can’t say why, but there is something to this manifestation’s aura that suggests violence. Not a safe ghost. Not a pleasant grey lady, or a wisp on a hillside. This spirit is definitely more on the malevolent side of things, and now Melanie is hiding from her.

 _Stupid,_ she mouths, staring up through the threadbare eaves of the building, where sunlight streams through holes in the roof. _What’s a ghost going to do, shout at you? Chase you a bit? Corner you and go ‘woo, woo, woo’ until she decides you’re scared enough? Calm down. Weepers are worse than this. Bloody sewers are worse. River krust. Outsider's eyes, the damn river krust.  
_

That mask, though. With the round glass eyes and elongated breathing tube; reminds her of rats, a little, and in this day and age that’s never a good thing. What would the face look like behind it? Is there a face? Is it better if she just takes her silvergraph plate and her misplaced courage, leaves and never comes back?

Sun glints on the floodwaters as Melanie exits her temporary hideout. It’s a clear day, and quiet aside from the occasional fall of rotten wood from dilapidated apartment buildings. Pebbles drizzle down like raindrops. Weeds are starting to choke the street signs and doorways; given a year or so, the district will be a lot harder to navigate. It’s just a shame the rest of the ghost hunting community refuses to come at all. For the moment, the place is almost beautiful.

Down the street, Melanie can just make out the old Chamber of Commerce Building, figureheaded by its enormous statue. It’s a good likeness of Empress Jessamine (may she reign long and hopefully put a stop to the Plague soon, if it’s not too much trouble). Even this far off, Melanie feels it watching her. The eyes are on her back as she heads for her dinghy on the Wrenhaven. It’s not far. No one sees her but statues. It’s fine. Whatever Georgie says, it’s _fine_.

The woman in red appears like a sped-up assembly of puzzle pieces, like a pile of rags coalescing in a non-existent wind. She’s not there. And then she is. The floodwaters pool at her shins; her shadow blots out sunlight.

“I let you go last time,” she says, and Melanie almost swallows her tongue in shock. “Thought you might be one of Delilah’s people, getting a little too cocky. But it turns out you’re a stranger. That’s a problem for me, and it’s a problem for you. Strangers don’t do so well around here. This is your only warning.” Her voice is low, muffled by the mask and breathing apparatus. She’s the first ghost Melanie has ever heard.

“Oh…Void take me,” Melanie says blankly. She fumbles uselessly at the bag on her hip, though it won’t help in the slightest. She doesn’t have the equipment she needs. “Look, just…just stay where you are, alright? Or in this general area. I’m going to run and get Georgie’s audiograph recorder off her, and then I’ll be right back. Take me an hour at most, I swear. I’ll be ever so quick. And then maybe you’d like to tell me your story, how you died, that sort of thing. Was it sad? Are you looking for vengeance? I could help, if you’ll just-”

“Time’s up,” the woman says, and pulls a gun from her belt.

It gleams, clean grey metal and ill-defined etching. The barrel stares Melanie down like an elongated eye socket. It sees her; she swears it does. She swears it glints like a wink, like a promise. In her nostrils, Melanie smells metal. Or blood. There’s a drumming in her ears.

She runs.

But not fast enough.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/157255657@N03/47548041871/in/dateposted/)

Something is wrong.

Melanie senses it, though for days she can’t put words to what ails her, beyond the fact that she hears strange music. That the blood in her ears pounds louder than the creak of the old floorboards of her bedroom, that her dreams are very, very red. She grows sullen. She snaps. She digs chunks of rock from the cobbled streets and keeps them in her pockets, cradled in hand. There are never enough knives about her person; she craves something sharper. Blunter. She is never quite dangerous enough.

A week after the bullet rehomes itself into her leg, Melanie stands in the kitchen of her dingy shared flat, and thinks about hurting Georgie.

They’re arguing. About the injury, about Melanie’s refusal to see another doctor ( _they can’t help, the only thing they know about these days is Plague, and how to watch people die. It’s fine, it’s not even infected, and it’s none of your business anyway so just_ -)

“The look on your face just now,” Georgie says. “Whatever that was, I could do without seeing it again, thanks very much.”

“It’s not-”

“Something’s _wrong_ , Melanie.” Georgie’s expression is set, uncompromising. She reddens with rage; Melanie can feel it coming off her in waves, like the heat from a fireplace. It’s pleasant. She doesn’t mention. “You’ve been off ever since you staggered home with a bullet stuck in your leg, and it’s…I don’t know. It’s not you. It’s like you’re sick or something.”

“I _don’t_ have Rat Plague,” Melanie snaps. She is very conscious of the searing heat, the steam frothing up under her ribcage, pressure building against the bone. It has nowhere to vent. She breathes deep and feels it lessen, a little, and painfully. There has to be a better way to let it loose. “We’d both know by now if I did. And you’re the one who put up stupid bone charms around the doors, just because whatshisname at the Institute said you should. Weren’t they supposed to keep us safe?”

She is aware of leaning closer, like a flower drawn to sun, or a rat to a fresh carcass; the warmth of Georgie’s anger is pleasant in this damp little room, where no amount of woolly socks are ever quite enough. Fever is a symptom of the Plague, but Melanie doesn’t feel feverish. Just drawn in. She likes how the rage licks at her, inside and out.

And then, abruptly, it disappears. Melanie watches inspiration dawn on Georgie’s face, and feels herself grow sullen. She preferred the anger. She doesn’t know why.

“That’s it,” Georgie says. “The Institute. They have a library, and, um, researchers? I think? They definitely have a library, I’ve been in there a few times. All sorts of strange things. They’re busy taking statements about the Plague, Jon says, but I don’t think they’d mind you going in for a bit of research.”

 _Hours of work_ , Melanie thinks, irritated. _Hours and hours, and by the end I probably won’t have anything I can write up for the newspaper. Wasted time, no coin to show for it. How are we going to eat?_ In her mind’s eye she sees her small pile of savings dwindling, coin by coin. She wanted it for new silvergraph plates. She wanted it so badly.

“There it is again,” Georgie observes. Her tone is sharp; she is reaching the end of her patience. An uncommon occurrence for her. “That look. It’s like…it’s twisted. Like you’re going to jump at me or something. You’d better bloody not. You’re my best friend, Mel, but if you hit me I swear I’ll hit back. Swear by the Outsider.”

For one clear and silent moment, Melanie thinks about doing it anyway. Imagines the blood. Hers. Georgie’s. Imagines wrestling on the creaking floorboards until one of them lies still. It’s…tempting. It warms her.

And it’s the push she needs to realise just how right Georgie is.

“No,” Melanie says. She forces her fists to unclench; doesn’t remember clenching them, though her nails have dug ragged crescents into her palm, and sting as she stretches. “No, I’m not going to, I promise.” It is as much to convince herself as Georgie. “I’ll go over today, how’s that? Though I doubt they’ll take me any more seriously than last time.”

She is unprepared for Georgie to hug her. Perhaps because she feels so very unstable, unsafe; like a pile of glass shards on the floor, her friend walking barefoot atop of her. _Stop,_ she wants to say. _I don’t think that’s safe anymore. I’m sharper than I used to be. I cut._

“Good,” Georgie says into her ear. “I won’t lie, I’ve been worried. Let me know if you want company, or.”

“No. It’s fine.”

“Right,” Georgie withdraws. Her absence is a relief; again, Melanie makes her fists unclench. “And you never know; they might have something on that ghost of yours. The red lady. Maybe they know her name. Maybe they can help you find her again.”

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/157255657@N03/47495352062/in/dateposted/)

The Archivist doesn’t want her statement. Or maybe he does, but he’s so pompous about the whole bloody encounter that Melanie finds herself withdrawing her offer half-spoken. She doesn’t mention the bullet, or the rage, though both are a heavy presence in her mind and her body as she storms her way into the library stacks.

Georgie’s parting words haunt her, like a half-remembered fragment of tune, worn dull by memory. Find the ghost. Find the woman in red, with her gun and her mask and her dispassionate aim. She did not mean to kill, Melanie is sure. Nor did she trouble herself to fire a warning shot near Melanie’s feet, as easy as it would have been. No. She chose to maim, in such a way that Melanie should spend the rest of her life limping-

But she doesn’t limp. She hasn’t needed to for days, and her skin has sealed itself tight over the bullet her dockside sawbones told her was unsafe to remove. He also told her she’d never run again. That she’d likely be crippled.

She isn’t. She’s just angry.

In the end, Melanie finds answers jammed into the overcrowded shelves, between books and dust motes and ink. It takes her days. Maybe more. She loses time, loses focus, and the blood in her ears pounds louder the longer it takes. Around her, the scholars and researchers and the desperate fools like herself shuffle their papers, ignore her, avoid her.

Every now and then, a distant explosion from over in the Academy of Natural Philosophy. Melanie looks up each time. Mostly she returns to work, uninterested. Sometimes she stays with her head tilted towards the adjoining buildings, and knows without knowing how that someone has been injured. Once, there is a death. She feels it. Like a sharp spark of joy, like a piece of good news from a friend. She returns to her work reluctantly. With music in her ears.

And, at last, she finds her answers.

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/157255657@N03/47495354292/in/dateposted/)

The rage is constant. It seeps through her bloodstream like poison; in the early hours of the morning, with Georgie asleep in the next room and the Admiral watching wary from the doorway, Melanie lifts a whale oil lamp over one wrist and peers at her veins. They should look different, she thinks. They should be changing, as she can feel herself changing. Red like the blood that pounds in her ears, constant war drums beating like her footsteps on the cobblestones outside. Her wrists seem too fragile for the forked and furious thing she is becoming. Her fingers seem too blunt; she’d love to file them pointed. In the tattered flesh and hardening scar of her leg, she feels the bullet.

It stirs. It rolls within her, baby in bloody embryonic mess. Like her, it is becoming. Maybe they’re heading for the same destination.

The Admiral hisses, hackles up and ears fear-flat, sprinting for the safety of their battered old couch as Melanie storms for the door. She doesn’t bother with a coat. Shirt and breeches and boots, and the blood so hot and so pervasive that the cold can’t find a crack to seep through. Like a hound with a scent, Melanie makes for the Flooded District.

She kills a man on the south bank of the Wrenhaven River. A drunk, a sailor or dockworker or builder or _something_ , he stumbles away from his group of mates and follows her south-west, calling after her. For fun, or because he was dared to, or because he likes to see young women hunch in on themselves, hands in pockets, picking up the pace. Melanie forms the familiar hunch, feeling her muscles tighten like catapult ropes, and in her pockets she finds the knives she stole from Georgie’s kitchen set. She stomps her way to river’s edge and behind a pile of crates. She slits a throat under the unjudgmental gaze of moss-worn stones and anchored houseboats. Only the Outsider sees where she dumps the body.

(It will wash up in Slaughterhouse Row a month from now. No one will comment. No one will care. The Plague has made them all ghosts to each other, and the looming shadow of Filth forms a camouflage, a noxious cloud cover under which the bloody-minded kill).

There are eyes on her in the Flooded District. Ugly masks with round glass eyes and muffled breathing; she can hear the blood in them too, thick and warm and tempting. And different. Coated (tainted?), shot through with a surge of hunger not quite like her own. In one pocket, Melanie fingers the edge of her notebook.

 _Not Filth,_ she thinks. _Not…Lonely, no, though some of them are but it’s not enough, I think. Not Vast. Not the mad spirals, though some of them are mad. Not the pounding war drums, not quite. A sister power. They’re the hunters._

She’s ready for them to cause trouble; knows instinctively that though they could track her across Dunwall and out into the Gristol swampland, though they are trained and honed like sharp-edged swords, they won’t chance a close-quarters fight with one who hears the red drums in her ears. They wouldn’t win. Better to shoot from a distance. Or to withdraw in silence as she steps into their leader’s snare.

The red woman waits in a decrepit bank foyer, the marble floor drowned in ankle-deep water; gold and silver coins catch the eye as Melanie approaches, wealth strewn abandoned across the wet, veined tiles. If she bent and fished she could stuff her pockets with enough to feed herself and Georgie for months. Enough to buy new equipment, to pay for a larger print run, to bribe her way into the richer districts and hunt the high-class spectres.

But blood smells much like gold, and the woman is waiting.

“This was a mistake,” she says, muffled under her mask. “I thought after last time you’d have learnt your lesson about wandering where you’re not wanted.”

Her tone is unconcerned. Bored even; infuriating.

“You _shot_ me,” Melanie spits at her. “I didn’t do anything to you, and now look. What did you do? What have you _done to me_?”

The woman shrugs. “I’m not sure. We stole that gun from a nobleman’s safe, months ago. Never used it beforehand. Haven’t since; Daud thinks there’s something tainted about it.”

“Who’s Daud?”

“ _I_ think he just doesn’t want us playing with toys we didn't get through him,” the woman says, ignoring the question. “He took it back after I shot you, and I haven’t seen it since, though I’ve tried tracking it down. He’s good at hiding things. Any idea what it was? Or whose it was?”

The war-drum blood is up in Melanie’s ears, drowning out the questions she wants to ask, and though her fingers itch to take more silvergraphs ( _close-ups, the readers will love it_ ) she has left her machine in pieces on the floor of her bedroom. Now she carries knives with which to record what she sees. She doesn’t need to settle for scraps of other people’ ghosts.

She can make her own.

“Let me show you,” Melanie says, and lunges.

The woman is semi-solid, half-disintegrated when Melanie’s clawing hands grab her fragments and haul her bodily back into the room. She reforms as Melanie roars at her. Behind the mask, a startled sound.

“Well, that’s unexpected,” says the woman. “Fair enough. You want a fight? Why not. I needed a break from the planning, anyway.” She moves like a snake, wriggling out of the clumsy grip Melanie has on her throat; she has training, skill, she knows far better than Melanie how to handle herself here. And she’s very definitely not a ghost. Melanie can feel her blood through their clothes, where it sings beneath the skin. Can feel the life, and itches to extinguish it.

There is a knife in the woman’s hand; it wasn’t there a second ago, and a second later finds it pressed into the soft space beneath Melanie’s sternum, like the wall presses up against her back. She finds herself winded. She doesn’t recall being thrown across the room.

“You’re not very good at this, are you?” The woman twists her knife, gently, and Melanie’s breaths turn shallow. “Not much of a challenge at all.”

“I’m just warming up,” Melanie snaps.

“Weak words from a weak opponent.” Contempt, as sharp as the knife. Melanie fans the anger, fans the steam and pressure building up within her, until her fingers tremble in time with the bullet in her leg. She’s abuzz with fury. She imagines a wasp, and slips one hand onto a pocket, finding a weapon of her own.

“What’s your name?” she asks to cover the movement.

“Does it matter?”

“I want to know.”

The knife splits Melanie’s worn old woollens, cutting through her shirt and into her skin. There’s no pain; she hasn’t felt pain in days, and not since being shot. She doesn’t have room for pain under all the anger.

Blood, though. She has plenty of room for that. It starts to trickle down her stomach in rivulets, warm and not unwelcome.

“Billie,” says the woman in a coat like the insides of Melanie’s skin; like the drumming in her ears. “Not that it matters. You won’t get to use it.”

“I will,” Melanie tells her. “I’ll put it in the caption when I take a _real_ silvergraph of your ghost.”

She lifts her own knife; lashes out, and grabs with her other hand, seizing Billie’s coat as she makes to dodge the attack. With blood in her ears, dripping down past her navel, Melanie feels herself boiling over at the edges. Her seams are coming apart, and inside them she is _red_.

And for all her training, Billie doesn’t have the bullet pulsing in her leg. She’s not quite strong enough to free herself. Melanie drops the blade and hauls her in by the coat, spins, and slams her hard into the wall. She leans in herself, pressing her forehead against the mask’s, her eyes against the round glass windows. Her cheeks are warm with Billie’s startled rage, and the pleasant thrill of her freshly cracked rib.

“I know you,” Melanie says. “You’re one of the hunters, aren’t you? Bet you’d love to hunt _me_. You’d be faster, you’d stay awake longer, and you’d kill me in my sleep. But I’m not asleep. I’m just angry. That’s who I am now, and you’re not enough to stop me.”

Billie is calmer than she should be. Cold; thoughtful, even. Hardly gasping as Melanie presses a hand to the damaged rib and squeezes. “You might be right. Daud could stop you; he has the mark, he’d snap you like a twig. And Delilah. She’d do worse. I’m not yet as strong as them.”

“That’s a shame. For you.”

“And you,” Billie says. “Look how new you are. What, you take a bullet and think it makes you the Outsider himself? I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you, girl. Angry, is it? Thought so. I know what makes your kind tick.”

One gloved hand closes over Melanie’s, where it presses against Billie’s ribs. Pushes, forces it closer; Melanie feels the bones bending, tastes their creak and the sweetness of a crack beginning to grow. Billie’s gritted pain is music to her. She chases it like a starving wolf at the site of a slaughter, like a bullet chases flesh in a battlefield. Billie’s ribs groan, and Melanie groans with them. She can’t help herself. She’s dizzy with their pain. Alight and warm, her skin tingling pleasantly under her clothes.

“Easy,” Billie gasps, her breaths as short as she can manage. “You’re so. _Easy_. No subtlety. No…elegance. Rather be a, a hunter. Any day.” Her knife is back; it finds the tear in Melanie’s shirt, the weeping cut above her navel. And with a sharp, downwards yank, the shirt billows open in tatters.

Underneath, the skin is split. Melanie freezes; the blood in her ears drums on. She waits to see how deep Billie has cut her. She wonders if this is the end. A sharp collapse at the red woman’s feet, the music pooling, clotting around her. She stares down at herself, transfixed by the way the blood beads and dribbles down her stomach. Like rain on a window. Like oil on water. Like a flute in the midst of cacophony. It seeps past her belt and into the hem of her trousers, tickling as it goes. Instinctively, Melanie squeezes her thighs tight, and shivers.

“Enjoying yourself?” Billie mutters. She sounds so distant to Melanie’s ears. “It’s the only thing you’ll _ever_ enjoy, now. Maybe I should apologise. I won’t. But maybe I should.”

It hurts now; a lovely, sharp sting, an artist’s brushstroke across her uninteresting skin. Melanie prods at the edges of the cut. Her fingertips stain, but the sting doesn’t widen into a chasm, and the wound isn’t as deep as expected. It might scar. That would be good, she thinks, that would be right. A scar is just another kind of ghost; imagine having one of her own. Imagine being covered in them.

“That’s pretty,” she says. “Do you want one? I’m still learning, but it’s only fair. And then I’ll need to take a silvergraph.”

Behind the mask, Billie laughs, harsh. “How wet are you right now?”

“Very,” Melanie says. She sounds as distant as Billie; she can hardly hear either of them over the music. The drums, the pounding pulse, the pain. It’s so loud. She can’t think. “I don’t- I’m not myself right now, am I? I’m not. I killed someone earlier, and I’ve never done that before- why not? It was a good thing to do. It felt _good_. Everything since then, it all feels good. I think I’d even like it if you killed me, as long as there was blood enough. Oh, Void take me, is this what I _am_ now?”

She doesn’t push Billie’s hands away as they grab for her belt, though it requires that she put the knife away and that in itself is disappointing. But it might come back, Melanie reasons. Maybe later. Or she could bring out her own.

Billie’s gloves are soft leather, cared-for and kept clean, and still Melanie smells the blood that has seeped into their fibres, sticking between the stitches. People have died under those gloves. She can feel them. Choked last breaths, pleas bubbling out of collapsed lungs and cut throats, cries firmly smothered. Her trousers shoved halfway to her knees. A glove finds its way between her legs, two fingers pushing impatiently, easily into her. Melanie grabs for Billie’s ribs. She squeaks, a little; it's more than she's had in ages, as badly as she wants it. Impatient and uncompromising.

“Does it help?” she asks. Squeezes cracked ribs until Billie's pained grunts match her own.

“No idea,” Billie says. “Why not? I’m guessing you like it rough.”

“Don’t you?”

“Sure,” Billie says, flexing her fingers in a beckoning motion, tugging with her wrist. Impaled and aching, Melanie is made to shuffle closer. “We’re not that different, your kind and mine. We like all the things we’re not meant to.” Her fingers press in to the second knuckle, blood on her gloves, her palm a solid shape that Melanie grinds against. Dizziness blurs her vision; her stomach looks like a murder scene, and her knees shake with every careless flex of Billie’s fingers. The leather grows wet.

Every death on those gloves is a ghost; they bury themselves so deep in her she can _taste_ them, so numerous she wonders how they’ll fit. A third finger is pushing relentlessly in with the other two, a bruising sting. Somehow, it finds the space. Somehow, Melanie fits it.

There is no way to read Billie’s expression under the mask, but her neck is bent to watch the quiver in Melanie’s thighs, the damp stain seeping into her gloves. She grunts as Melanie leans in to lick her hidden cheek.

She might not kill this woman after all, she thinks, squeezing again at Billie’s creaking ribs. She might not need to. There might be ways they could make their needs a thing to share. The things they’re not meant to like. The hunt, the kill. The gasped last breath.

The drums in her ears die down as Melanie gasps; like a wounded thing, she quivers in Billie’s arms and around her fingers. She is quiet. Both of them are, in the aftermath.

It’s a start.


End file.
